Happy Women Travel More

If you've ever found yourself scrambling to get everything done before a trip—then returning home to a chaotic house, an overflowing inbox, and zero groceries—you're not alone. That last stretch before vacation can feel like a sprint, and coming home doesn't always feel like the reset it should. In this episode, I'm sharing a practical, stress-reducing pre-vacation prep routine that covers everyth...

If you've ever come home from a vacation feeling like something was missing, this episode introduces my signature travel style framework — a core backbone of this entire podcast — and opens a five-part series dedicated to helping you discover exactly what makes travel feel magical for you specifically. Because 'okay' vacations aren't good enough, and once you know your travel style, you'll never p...

Something big is happening with the Happy Women Travel More podcast — and episode 300 feels like exactly the right time to talk about it. In this milestone episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on where the show has been, where it's going, and what's changing. I'm also sharing a bit of my own personal journey and how it mirrors the evolution of this podcast — because the two are more connected tha...

What are you actually getting from your travel experiences — and is it really what you wanted in the first place? Travel has been sold to us a certain way for a long time, and many of us have followed the typical vacation script without stopping to ask whether it's actually delivering what we came for. In this episode, a newly released study on what Americans want from travel reveals a telling gap...

→ Need help sorting out the big picture of your upcoming New Zealand trip? Get my 1-on-1 support with my VACATION BLUEPRINT DESIGN service ← Throughout the New Zealand, Your Way series, we've covered everything you need to plan a trip to New Zealand on your own terms — the regions, the activities, the logistics, the driving, the packing, and everything in between. And this is where it all comes to...

→ Need help sorting out the big picture of your upcoming New Zealand trip? Get my 1-on-1 support with my VACATION BLUEPRINT DESIGN service ← New Zealand's weather has a reputation for being unpredictable — you might find yourself peeling off your jacket before noon, reaching for your rain jacket by afternoon, and happy you have your fleece by evening. Knowing how to pack for that kind of variabili...

→ Need help sorting out the big picture of your upcoming New Zealand trip? Get my 1-on-1 support with my VACATION BLUEPRINT DESIGN service ← Waking up to sweeping mountain views, cooking breakfast with the doors wide open, and moving through one of the most beautiful countries in the world without ever unpacking a suitcase — the campervan road trip in New Zealand is as real and as magical as it so...

→ Need help sorting out the big picture of your upcoming New Zealand trip? Get my 1-on-1 support with my VACATION BLUEPRINT DESIGN service ← Few travel experiences compare to a self-drive road trip through New Zealand's wide open landscapes, where breathtaking scenery unfolds around every bend. It's the kind of trip that stays with you — and the goal is for it to feel that way from the very first...

→ Need help sorting out the big picture of your upcoming New Zealand trip? Get my 1-on-1 support with my VACATION BLUEPRINT DESIGN service ← Throughout this New Zealand, Your Way series, the consistent advice has been to keep your itinerary simple and focus on one island. But if visiting both the North and South Island is truly what you want from your trip — this episode is your permission slip. I...

→ Need help sorting out the big picture of your upcoming New Zealand trip? Get my 1-on-1 support with my VACATION BLUEPRINT DESIGN service ← New Zealand may not be the first destination that comes to mind for wine—but it's an incredible wine destination. And while wine might feel like a small part of a vacation unless you're a wine connoisseur, it's something you can quite literally bring home wit...

→ Need help sorting out the big picture of your upcoming New Zealand trip? Get my 1-on-1 support with my VACATION BLUEPRINT DESIGN service ← New Zealand is one of those destinations where every direction you turn requires a photo, and your camera roll fills up fast. But without a bit of intention, all of those incredible landscapes can start to feel like a blur. In this episode of the New Zealand,...

New Zealand is overflowing with unforgettable experiences—but the real magic happens when you discover the activities that actually light you up, so your trip feels like more than just a checklist. In this episode of the New Zealand, Your Way series, we're taking a different approach to "things to do" in New Zealand. Instead of running through a long list of recommendations, we're breaking activit...

→ Need help sorting out the big picture of your upcoming New Zealand trip? Get my 1-on-1 support with my VACATION BLUEPRINT DESIGN service ← Planning a trip to New Zealand can feel overwhelming at first—because New Zealand is bigger than it seems, you can't see it all, and you have to narrow it down. Before you can even start building an itinerary, you have to answer one major question: should you...

→ Need help sorting out the big picture of your upcoming New Zealand trip? Get my 1-on-1 support with my VACATION BLUEPRINT DESIGN service ← New Zealand is one of those destinations where it feels like every corner of the country looks incredible (spoiler: it is!). And that's exactly what makes planning a trip here a little tricky—because you  can't explore every little corner. Before you can even...

Welcome to the New Zealand, Your Way series, where I'm sharing everything you need to know to design a vacation to New Zealand that's uniquely yours. In this first episode, we're starting with the foundation: the key things you need to know before you dive into the nitty gritty planning. These four big-picture decisions will shape your entire trip and make the rest of the planning process feel so...

It's easy to think of winter as an off-season for travel with less-than-ideal weather, but there are destinations around the world that truly shine during these months — where the weather, experiences, and overall vibe are at their best. You also have options when it comes to the type of winter vacation you can take: you can embrace cozy, snow-covered scenery, escape to somewhere warm and sunny, o...

Traveling abroad without a guide or tour group can feel intimidating at first. Questions about navigating unfamiliar places, communicating in another language, or figuring out transportation can make independent travel seem totally not doable. Maybe you've been curious what it's actually like to travel on your own, or maybe you're ready to move past guided tour groups, but can't get past the worry...

Packing for a mountain vacation can feel a little trickier than packing for other types of trips. The weather can change quickly throughout the day, which means you need layers for warmth, flexibility for shifting conditions, and clothing that works just as well on a trail as it does exploring a town afterward. After many years of traveling almost exclusively to mountain destinations, I've develop...

Travel advice can be framed as universal, but the truth is most of it depends. Preferences, budgets, life stage, energy levels — all of it plays a role in what makes a trip "good." And yet, after nearly two decades of planning my own travels and seven years designing vacations professionally for clients, there are a handful of travel principles I don't waver on. In this episode, I'm sharing those...

Vacation planning usually begins as excitement, but it can quickly turn into over-researching, second-guessing, and circling the same options without making real progress once the decisions start stacking up. In this episode, I break down two practical, mindset-shifting strategies that will help you make faster decisions about your vacation without rushing or compromising on quality. You'll learn...

It's so easy to overthink your vacation plans — to spend hours researching, comparing options, and second-guessing every decision. And if travel really matters to you, that probably feels completely normal. Maybe it even feels responsible. But while we're busy overthinking certain parts of the process, it can be all too easy to underthink the pieces that actually shape how the trip feels once we'r...

Vacations have a way of feeling like they disappear faster than we expect. You wait for them, plan for them, and look forward to them for months — and then in the blink of an eye they're over, leaving you sad and wondering where the time actually went. Why the heck do vacations feel like they fly by? In this episode, we're calling out those sneaky patterns that cause this so we can be aware of the...

Have you ever hit the last night of a trip and felt that sinking realization that your vacation is already over — like it just slipped right through your fingers? Or you get home, unpack your bags, and it's almost hard to believe you were even gone at all. In this episode, I'm sharing one simple shift that can dramatically change how long a vacation feels — not by rearranging dates or squeezing in...

I don't think any of us set out to take a vacation that feels like a bunch of work. A trip is supposed to feel like a break — something you look forward to, not something you manage, execute, and then need to recover from. And yet, sometimes a vacation starts to feel heavy before you even leave… or quietly turns into another job once you're there. In this episode, we're unpacking the sneaky ways v...

Travel has become so woven into our lives that we rarely stop to question it. We work hard, we take time off, we go somewhere — it's just part of the rhythm. Somewhere along the way, travel also turned into another form of achievement. Another box to check. Another way to prove we're keeping up, doing what we're "supposed" to do, and not missing out. In this episode, we take a closer look at how e...